What the fuck?

As part of the current pattern of actions, this is quite alarming — it demonstrates that SUP/LJ now actively and openly disapproves of and targets specific groups.

If you use X to insult someone, you aren't just insulting that person — you are insulting X. You are saying that X is something worthy of being insulted. It doesn't matter if you think they are a horrible person. If you don't think that X is something horrible about them, then insult the reasons you do think they are horrible.

I've seen far too many homophobic, racist, misogynistic, misandristic, transphobic, sizeist, anti-disabled and anti-semitic slurs "justified" by assertions that person being insulted doesn't personally deserve respect or that they fit some bad stereotype. Use something as an insult and you are saying that it is something worth of admonishment. Your words can say a lot more about what you think than you intend them to.

Found via recoiling:



Just when you thought Fox News couldn't get any worse, they turn themselves into the televised version of the Weekly World News.

By the way, the "lesbian gang" sent to prison in New York was actually 4 women who dared fight back against a man who attacked them.

The recent horrific massacres of 32 students at Virgina Tech by Cho Seung-Hui has sparked a lot of political discussion. Here is my opinion...

Psychiatry

The pro-psychiatry people were quick to make some points about the need for coercing people into treatment. Even the revelation that Cho Seung-Hui was receiving treatment and was on psychiatric medication has not silence the "control the crazies" crowd. I cannot see how he could have been controlled any further without permanently locking up anyone displaying moderate mental illness - and that comes with it's own problems, principle people hiding problematic thoughts and feelings at all, and processing them internally with no outside checks or influence.

Gun Control

The anti-gun lobby sees events like these as political gold. Obviously guns are evil and vile and nasty and wrong. But I firmly believe if just two of the people at Norris Hall beside the shooter had guns, a lot less people would have been killed. The problem isn't a surplus of guns, the problem is a lack of guns. If more citizens had the ability to defend themselves against this kind of massacre, this scale of massacre by a lone gunman couldn't happen.

Westboro Baptist Church

Fred Phelps and his gang have been protesting at funerals of queer people and queer supporters for over a decade. Most of America didn't care one lick. A couple years ago he started protesting military funerals. That really pissed people off, because unlike (known) gay people, those people mattered. Avoiding the political pitfalls of banning protests at the funerals of the filthy gays, congress passed a law banning political protests at military funerals only.

Last year, the Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to protest at the funerals for the victims of the Amish school house massacre in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. These people were definitely not loathsome queers. FOX News gave a couple representatives from the Westboro Baptist Church an hour of uninterrupted air time on their news radio station in exchange for WBC cancelling the protest.

What will come of their planned protests of these victims funerals, I do not know. Will FOX News give them more air time? Will the law banning protests at military funerals be extended? Who knows?

We all know the September 11^th attacks were a great tragedy and none of the victims deserved to die. After the disaster, the victim's family (excluding same-sex partners) were given large sums of money in "compensation". Unlike in the aftermath of Katrina, no one was snooping around to see if these families were "wasting" their money on "inappropriate" things such as clothing they shouldn't have.

There was not a move to pinch pennies in the recovery effort. Nobody freaked out if they so much as heard a rumor from someone who knew someone who was a Katrina victim who bought nice clothing are jewelery.

The World Trade Center had been attacked before September 11^th, yet no one blamed the victims for working in a known target and rightly so. Why then are the Katrina victims blamed so much for what happened to them?

Why are the Katrina victims so much less deserving than the victims of September 11^th? There are two obvious differences in the demographics groups of people: race and wealth. It's pretty obvious that both have played a role.

More than a million people have taken to the streets of Sao Paulo to celebrate the Brazilian city's tenth annual Gay Pride parade. Revellers dressed in costumes danced through one of the main avenues, as music blared out of huge loudspeakers. One report quoted police as saying that 2.4 million people were at the parade, which organisers say has become the largest of its kind in the world. Gay rights activists say discrimination is still widespread across Brazil. Eighty-one Brazilians were killed last year because of their sexual orientation, campaigners say. The theme for this year's event is "homophobia is a crime" to highlight proposed anti-discrimination laws. full article

Now that's a pride parade! Wow!

If you have a drink in an Austin bar or restaurant, and you do something out of the ordinary, you could go to jail. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission says they can spot people who've had too much to drink, just by looking at them. It's an issue creating a lot of controversy. It's also creating a lot of arrests. THE TABC sting operation has increased arrests by 95 percent. Agents are going into bars and restaurants looking for folks who are a danger to themselves or others. When they spot someone drawing attention to themselves, that person is likely headed to jail. "Don't do anything more than anyone around you in a bar is doing," TABC spokeswoman Carolyn Beck said. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission are sending agents into bars to ticket people who have had too much to drink. How can they tell? Simply, they look at you. "You may be arrested and taken to jail and get a citation as well, It's the officer's discretion," Beck said. full article

It is absurd to be arrested simply for drinking "too much" at a bar. Government invasiveness in one of it's finest forms. Furthermore, the completely arbitrary nature of the enforcement (the officers tell by looking at you) makes discriminatory enforcement against minority groups almost a certainty.

A group of more than 80 powerful evangelical leaders have defied the Bush White House and called for federal legislation to curb global warming. The statement marks the first time that leading evangelicals have taken up the green issue. And it has caused splits within the religious right. They have embraced the environment in recent years, most notably with a "What would Jesus drive?" campaign against sports utility vehicles. But this is a new departure. The statement - signed by mega-church pastors like Rick Warren, author of the bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life, heads of Christian colleges and missionary organisations - puts saving "God's green earth" on a par with traditional evangelical concerns like abortion and gay marriage. full story

There is danger in blanketly labeling any group as "enemy". Even groups that generally have restricting our rights as part of their agendas. We are all part of humanity. We are all part of the Happening. Returning the hate does nothing but keep it going. If we love the Fundamentalist Christians as Christ has asked them love us, maybe they will learn by our example the peace of the message they hold sacred.

I just proactively banned all members of the following communities from my journal and all communities that I run:

( list of communities, some names contain offensive slurs )

I also went ahead and added all the new members of rapists_unite to the banning fun.

stolen from kyrene

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian. I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman. I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights. We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time. I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room. I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me. I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again. I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear. We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men. I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me. I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman. I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman. I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male. I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men. I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that. I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual. I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me. I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind. I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love. Repost this if you want to.

Why are these people considered terrorists while these people are not?

Why is hate speech a problem in online forums? Why do I get upset about it? Why do I not tolerate it in any of the online forums I run? Because hate speech and attacks on specific individuals and on specific groups are often and regularly used to systematically exclude certain populations from the discussion. I guess people could just "suck it up", some people do, for a while at least. Most people of the selected groups however realize that participating in the forum is not worth the mental abuse and stress of the constant attacks. Even in the cases where a user stays for a while, the constant attacks, often lauded by others in the forum, eliminates any respect and impact the target's words may receive. They are effectively silenced. While many of these forums claim to be open, by allowing this sort of activity they are in fact not. They are closed forums that allow in prey occasionally.

I have noticed that only traditionally oppressed groups are expected to "suck it up" in these supposedly "open forums". Try saying anything negative about, for example, straight people, and you will instantly get a barrage of "reverse discrimination", "just as bad as any other form of prejudice" or "not all straight people are like that" from the very same people who are constantly telling you to "suck it up". They can dish it out, but they can't take it.

The people who frequent these "open forums" complain wildly about any forum that doesn't allow them to air their hate. They claim their free speech is violated because they cannot evict by harassment any groups they do not like. The very same people who state "if you don't like it, start your own forum" are the ones who will complain that your forum doesn't also exclude you. They will go to great lengths to try to harass the forums, making many have to moderate posts and screen people who want to join the forum. These actions alone result in a diminishing of both membership and post volume, further dampening the voices of those who need the forum.

On the rare occasion I venture into some of the notorious "open forums" here on LiveJournal, I use one of two "fake" accounts. In these "open forums" I cannot give any details about my life experience. Nor do I feel comfortable even being there, but at least I can say something when I feel it is very necessary. Essentially, as long as I am completely closeted about being bisexual, a female feminst, transgendered, mentally ill, and a rape victim I can participate in the community without being constantly bullied until I leave, because it's "open to everyone".

I just realized something by looking at my last two posts. There is a time I feel safe outside: during a downpour. Rain somehow takes my fear away temporarily. Maybe it's because I've always been safe in the rain. I grew up in a situation where rain meant prosperity and happiness. My parents got along and generally happiness ensued. Drought brought fighting parents and less money. I still have such strong positive associations with the rain, that it overpowers my otherwise timid nature. I will jump and play in the rain. It's odd.

Something else that stands out is that years ago, when I was in much more danger outside, I didn't have the same level of fear. It's almost as if I'm a horse who's finally been broken and now knows her place. I don't want to know my place. I don't want to be a broken horse. I need to break out of this trap, before I spend the rest of my life in it. I know that many non-queer and non-trans folk end up with the same sort of agoraphobic response to the world, and for similar reasons. But, with all the talk about not living in fear of terrorist, about how doing so lets them win, I can't help but think that those that broke me were essentially terrorists. Just of a different breed. There is still a systematic effort to instill fear into the population, not by foreigners, but by the good-olde-boy network right here. By allowing my actions to be dictated by that fear, I am letting them win. That is something I need to change.

Over the past year or so I've had to come to terms with a new reality: I regularly pass on the street. I no longer stand out or am harassed by random street-corner hoodlums. Passing privilege is not something I'm used to. I'm still tensed up when I'm out, expecting someone to start in on me. But, it just doesn't happen anymore. I am very hesitant talk to people or respond if they talk to me. I try to scoot by with my head slumped over watching the ground. I still feel meek and scared, even though that is not an appropriate reaction to being out in familiar relatively safe areas during the day. Even when there is no one nearby that I could reasonable view as a potential threat.

I'm having a tough time processing this. I know the streets still aren't completely safe, but they have gotten a whole lot safer for me than they used to be. I feel a mix of happiness, disbelief and guilt. Yes, guilt. I worry that by not being as visible, I'm making it harder for others. I think of all those who still don't have passing privilege, who still are constant targets of random aggression. I didn't expect this to happen. I had assumed I would never "pass". And even with this newfound passing ability, I never plan on going "stealth". I'm always going to be out both online and off. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of being transgender in any way, but in public it is nice not to be picked out.

Let me clarify my last post, as I've already been accused of hating straight people because of it (off livejournal). I don't hate straight people. In fact, I would make an exception for a straight person I knew well and trusted enough to know that they would not be homophobic and would not be having homophobic friends over, even if we ended up hating each other as roommates. But I would need that guarantee. And I'd need to trust that guarantee. That's a large hurdle, but it is not insurmountable.

I'm fucking old, tired, and jaded. I spent years worried that I was going to be killed everytime I left my house. For many many years, being aggresively accosted by homophobes on the street was not a stray occurrence, it was a constant barrage. That has greatly effected my tolerance, and yes, my fear. I don't want to have to be afraid in my house, and when someone starts spouting homophobic bullshit, it doesn't just get me angry, it fills me with fear. I'm sorry if I'm disrespecting "diverse political beliefs", but this is about more than a political belief. This is about people in my house who hate me for existing. I've dealt with that crap for far far to long, and I'm done.

I don't live with straight roommates currently, and I will not live with a straight roommate again. That statement might seem blatantly prejudicial, but there are reasons for it. Too often have I had a straight roommate suddenly become extremely transphobic at the first hint of household discord. And even straight roommates who haven't done that bring their friends around, a couple of which usually turn out to be homophobic. I've heard the refrain "I don't pick my friends based on their political views" as an excuse too many times to care. So you can be friends with a homophobic prick, well bully for you. That doesn't mean I want to have to defend who I am in my own fucking house. Am I "discriminating" against straight people? Maybe. But, you know what, much of the time I spent homeless was not because I didn't have money to pay for a room in a roommate situation, it was because I couldn't find a roommate situation in which someone in the household wasn't "uncomfortable" living with a tranny. Well, it's my fucking turn to be uncomfortable. If that pisses you off, I don't care. I'm pissed off, too.

Last Thursday, I went to my 3:00pm evaluation at the Crisis Center at the Lexington Center for Mental Health. We were evaluated by a person name Susan for about half an hour and she determined we were in need of hospitalization. I was okay with that, but made it clear that we did not want to go back to Holy Family. I told them "Anywhere but Holy Family.".

After I had been waiting in the waiting room for quite some time (I don't know exactly how long, time was a blur), Susan came back and told us that she had section 12ed (involuntary committed) us to Holy Family. I told her I wasn't going to go. I asked her to find someplace else. I begged her to find someplace else. She replied that it was too late, I was already section 12ed to Holy Family.

I told her that I wasn't going to back to Holy Family. I started for the door. Susan told me that if I left, she'd have to call the police. I left anyway.

Knowing the police would be coming for me, and that they'd eventually find me, I made my way quickly to the Brooks Pharmacy in a nearby stripmall. At Brooks, I bought 2 bottles of Nyquil, a bottle of sleeping pills, and some candy.

Leaving Brooks, I saw a police car entering the parking lot. I quickly ducked into a clothing store. Pretending to browse behind the racks, I kept an eye on the window. The police car drove slowly by, but didn't see me.

A minute or two later, I peeked out of the store. The police car was still in the lot look in the windows. I quickly and calmly walked in the direction opposite the way the police were heading. I walked into McDonalds and out the other side.

I scurried off into the woods and took the sleeping pills, washing them down with one of the bottles of Nyquil. I also ate a few of the candies.

After the drugs had started taking effect, I decided I wanted to say goodbye to some of those I love. I was in a quite delirious state at the point, and didn't fully realize the risk of capture involved in such an endeavor. I left the woods and walked back to the strip mall. I brought my bag of goodies with me, because I didn't want to litter. I noticed another police car enter the lot, and I quickly ducked back into the McDonalds and sat down at one of the tables.

The police officers spotted me this time. I was pretty unmistakable in my satin and velvet pajamas, silk bathrobe, wild pigtails, and cats eye glasses. I'm sure the officers didn't have much of a problem identifying me at all.

As the police entered, I quickly finished what little was left the bottle of Nyquil, and downed a few stray sleeping pills that had fallen into the bag. Not the wisest move at that point, I admit, but I wasn't thinking very clearly.

The police asked me if I was Karen Luketin. To which I replied truthfully, "No". Our name is Beverly Luketin. I showed them our ID to prove it, holding my thumb over the word "Luketin". I said smugly, "See, my name is Beverly". Of course, the police took the ID, looked at it, and noted that my last name was Luketin. They knew I was who they were looking for.

The preceded to ask me about the pills, about which I was very cryptic. Knowing what I had taken, they called in an ambulance. They told me that they had me on a section 12, and there was nothing I could do.

When the ambulance arrived, the police told the paramedics that they were to wait, that the crisis center was sending it's own ambulance. However, when I collapsed simi-conscious onto the ground, the paramedics said they weren't waiting any longer, and rushed me to the emergency room at Waltham Deaconess Hospital.

The emergency room was a blur. I was plugged up to so many things, I felt like a borg. They fed me much charcoal. Apparently our heart rate went up to 175 while we were unconscious. Throughout the night I drifted in and out of consciousness. I made several delirious phone calls trying to tell people where I was. I kept talking to people, then turning my head to realize no one was there. I was hold and looking at things, only to find my hands were firmly and motionlessly folded on my stomach.

purpleglitter and zarthon tried to visit me around 3am, but the emergency room staff wouldn't let them see me. They were told that they weren't my "real" family, and that they would have to go. I didn't even find out that they had tried to visit until I talked to purpleglitter over the phone the following afternoon.

At some point after that, the emergency room staff decided we were in the clear physically. I was told that we were still going to Holy Family. I was very upset, and started ripping out the monitors and the IV. I told them there was no way I was still going after all that. Four orderlies held me down and I was given an quick injection. I awoke Friday afternoon at Holy Family.